The combination of drugs and method of administering them to condemned prisoners is constitutional, the Tennessee Supreme Court said in a decision striking down challenges to the state’s lethal injection protocol raised by death row inmate Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman.
Justice E. Riley Anderson, who wrote the court’s unanimous ruling, said none of the issues raised in Abdur’Rahman’s appeal should result in a judicial ban on lethal injection executions under existing Department of Corrections (DOC) policies. Anderson was joined in the decision by now-retired Chief Justice Frank F. Drowota, III, current Chief Justice William M. Barker and justices Adolpho A. Birch, Jr., and Janice M. Holder.
“Although this court has recently upheld the use of lethal injection as a constitutionally permissible means of imposing the death penalty … we have never addressed the issue of whether the specific protocol in Tennessee for executing a death sentence by lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment,” Anderson wrote. “…We conclude that the petitioner has failed to establish that the lethal injection protocol is cruel and unusual punishment under the United States or Tennessee constitutions.”
The Supreme Court ruling, filed Monday, affirms decisions by Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle and the state Court of Appeals, which held that the use of sodium Pentothal, pancuronium bromide (Pavulon) and potassium chloride does not deny due process or violate state or constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. The three courts also rejected other issues raised by Abdur’Rahman, including a claim that the use of Pavulon in executions violates a state law banning its use to euthanize pets.
“… We begin with an analysis of whether the lethal injection protocol comports with contemporary standards of decency,” Anderson wrote. “In ascertaining ‘contemporary standards of decency,’ a court must look to ‘objective evidence of how our society views a particular punishment today’ … The most reliable objective evidence of contemporary standards is most often found in legislation.”
Anderson said the Tennessee legislature adopted lethal injection as a means of carrying out executions and “there is overwhelming evidence that lethal injection, which is commonly thought to be the most humane form of execution, is consistent with contemporary standards of decency.”
“Moreover, no court has ever held that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” he wrote.
Abdur’Rahman, formerly known as James Lee Jones, was convicted of first degree
murder and sentenced to death for the 1986 murder of Patrick Daniels. Abdur’Rahman and another man entered the home Daniels shared with Norma Norman, bound, blindfolded and stabbed them. Norman survived her wounds.
In 1990, the Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed Abdur’Rahman’s first degree murder conviction and death sentence. The court also denied his application for permission to file a post-conviction appeal. Abdur’Rahman has a federal appeal pending.
He filed his challenge to the use of lethal injections in 2002 and received an evidentiary hearing in Chancery Court. Testimony from prison officials, medical experts and others dealt, in part, with the use of sodium Pentothal, which puts the inmates to sleep; Pavulon, which stops breathing; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. Experts testifying for Abdur’Rahman said the use of Pavulon creates a risk that an inmate would not be able to signal that he or she is suffering during the execution process. Experts for the state said the doses of the drugs administered under the protocol would make it unlikely an inmate would feel any pain.
Anderson said lethal injection is the method of execution in 37 of 38 states with capital punishment. The protocol used in Tennessee is “consistent with the overwhelming majority of lethal injection protocols used by other states and the federal government,” he wrote.
“… The petitioner’s arguments simply are not supported by the evidence in the record,” Anderson wrote. “There was no evidence in the record that the procedures followed under the lethal injection protocol have resulted in the problems feared by the petitioner; indeed, the undisputed evidence was that the sole lethal injection carried out in Tennessee, i.e., Robert Coe in 2000, had revealed ‘no significant difficulties with the process’ … We cannot judge the lethal injection protocol based solely on speculation as to problems or mistakes that might occur.”